


you can feel the light start to tremble

by atlantisairlock



Category: Gravity (2013), The Proposal (2009)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 19:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1316959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes twinkle. "Is it a long story?" </p><p>"It's a long story."</p><p>Matt presses another kiss to her temple. "Well, good thing we have time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can feel the light start to tremble

**Author's Note:**

> so i was wondering - what if - with a couple of massive tweaks of course - the proposal and gravity were in the same universe, only ten or so years apart? 
> 
> and thus, this fic was born.
> 
> title from 'if i lose myself' by onerepublic.

"So the biomedical engineer met the editor, and God said, let there be light."

"Andrew, I think you're mixing  _Twilight_ and the Holy Bible up."

"Am I? Let me try again. So the biomedical engineer met the editor, and he was overwhelmed at what an intelligent badass she was, and she in turn was amazed at his charm."

"Andrew, the first time we ever met, you dropped a cup of tea on me. And laughed. I was not overwhelmed by _anything_ except by my rage at what an obnoxious clumsy fool you were."

"Laughing is my  _defense mechanism;_ I was nervous. And horrorstruck. Because you were beautiful, and I'd just spilled a cup of tea on you. The horror. You might not accept my apology and a request to go out with me."

A smile twitches at the edge of Margaret's lips. "Andrew, darling?"

"Yes, Margaret?"

"Shut up."

 

 

"I told you God said  _let there be light,_ " Andrew whispers, looking at their tiny little daughter cradled in Margaret's arms. "If that isn't light I don't know what is."

Margaret laughs hoarsely, exhausted from the birth. "Andrew Ryan Paxton, if you decide to make our daughter's name a pun on light I will  _kill_ you."

"Okay, okay, I know when I'm beaten." He strokes the little girl's cheek tenderly, touches her forehead. "What do you think of Sarah?"

"Sarah Paxton-Tate. I like it." 

"I love it." Andrew leans closer and kisses her. "I love you."

Margaret presses against his shoulder and breathes against his jaw. "I love you, too."

 

 

"If you eat a lot of pretzels at one time, they taste like ham."

"She's right."

Margaret grits her teeth at the giggling coming from the pantry. "Andrew... Sarah... if I find out half my packet of comfort pretzels is  _gone,_ you are both buying me ten more."

"Mommy!"

_"Pumpkin!"_

"No! You have your own chips! Stop eating my pretzels!"

"Are you really getting possessive over  _pretzels?_ "

"Andrew!" 

In the end they manage to drag Margaret into the kitchen to eat the pretzels with them and she has to admit that they  _do_ taste a lot like ham.

 

 

"Baby."

"Yes, Andrew?"

"You are my rock, do you know that?" Andrew wraps his wife in a crushing embrace from behind the sofa and she squeals, laughing. "But a really squishy rock."

At Margaret's feet, Sarah rolls her eyes and blows a raspberry.  _"Gross."_

 

 

"Wall-E."

"The Lion King."

_"Wall-E."_

_"The Lion King."_

Sarah tugs insistently at her parents' shirts. "But I wanna watch  _Titanic,_ " She whines. "You two are  _boring._ "

"Why do _you_ want to watch _Titanic_ , little lady?" Margaret asks, in the same breath as Andrew laughing and scooping his daughter into the air. "But I'm less boring than Mommy, right?"

Sarah shakes her head and sticks her tongue out at him. "Wall-E is a  _bit_ cooler."

"Hah!"

Andrew rolls his eyes and lets out a long mock-groan.

 

 

The last time she ever sees both of them alive is when she's driving off to work on a Saturday and they wave to her from the front porch. "Don't come back from the park too late," she yells as she pulls out of the driveway, without knowing that they won't ever be back at all. 

 

 

She is driving when she gets the call.

Margaret screeches to a halt, turns the car around and begins to drive the five miles to the hospital. Her knuckles are white, fingers gripped tight on the steering wheel, and she refuses to cry.

 

 

The details come in a flood and nothing makes sense amidst the shock and the denial. Joyriding drug-abusers, a blind corner, the facts just slip past her like water through a sieve. All she wants is to see Andrew and Sarah, alive, well, she wants to turn back time and stop them driving to the park and do everything differently. Everything.  _I could have saved them. I could have stopped them. I could have. My fault, it's my fault. I could have._ "Where's my  _daughter_ , my daughter," Margaret remembers crying, remembers some faceless stranger telling her  _I'm sorry she didn't make it ma'am I promise it was instantaneous and painless_ in a voice that she can only interpret as patronising. 

And Andrew...

He wavers in and out of consciousness, terrifies her with an EEG that stays flat for far too long before registering tiny blips again. He can barely open his eyes and when she squeezes his hand, he can't muster up the strength to squeeze back. They tell her to prepare to say her goodbyes, but Margaret clings on to hope, because she's already lost Sarah, she  _can't_ lose Andrew too. He's still alive. There's still a chance. 

Two hours after the accident she's still by his side, still holding on to his limp fingers, and that's when he begins to rasp out a sentence. "Hello, beautiful."

It's scratchy and gravelly but it's  _Andrew,_ and Margaret nods, the tears welling in her eyes. "Andrew."

He looks at a spot just behind her, eyes glazing over. "Please wait," he coughs, "just a little bit more time."

Her heart stops. "Andrew, no, we've already lost Sarah, please don't scare me, _please!_ Andrew - " 

Andrew's gaze on her is steady, filled with sorrow. "I was... so lucky to meet you. So lucky to have some time with you and Sarah. It's a shame... we were only chapters in each other's books." He pauses, heaves a shaky breath. "You... you have to forgive, and move on. Don't be bitter... don't hold a grudge. I love you so much, I always will." A single tear rolls down his cheek and he uses the last vestiges of his waning strength to grip her wrist a little tighter. "You'll remember... to live in the moment... won't you? No more living... in the past, Margaret. Do that for me. Do that for... Sarah."

He smiles, one last solemn, beatific smile and then he closes his eyes and a stillness settles over the room.

The EEG flatlines. 

She does not cry.

 

 

Margaret doesn't talk about the funeral, or the trial and prosecution, or the period where she just slept for three days with bouts of meaningless consciousness in between. She doesn't talk about the sympathy her colleagues offer her and the pitying glances people give her when they think she isn't looking. 

After a while, she just doesn't talk at all.

 

 

The opportunity to move to Lake Zurich, in Illinois, to begin completely anew is irresistible. Packing up her life's belongings is the biggest chore she's ever forced herself to do in  _years._

A garage sale, six boxes and two rubbish bags later, she begins packing in the photographs and the photo albums. 

It is only then, six months on, that she allows herself to break down and just fall to pieces.

 

 

Lake Zurich is beautiful. Her new home is smaller and brighter and warmer and  _emptier._ Margaret begins to settle into a comfortable routine that involves a lot of overtime, a lot of mindless driving with the radio on, and no talking. 

On a whim, she decides to change her name - because everything else has changed, so why not the one label that has defined her for her entire life? 

She toys with the idea of a few names from her side of the family - the squeeze in her heart when she thinks of taking on her mother's name tells her it's a bad, bad idea. Then she looks at Andrew's side of the family, then some totally original names. None of them fit, none of them feel right, but neither does  _Margaret Paxton-Tate,_ any longer. 

Then she remembers that it was  _Andrew Ryan Paxton-Tate_ and  _Ryan_ calls out to her, and it doesn't matter that it's traditionally masculine because she's as much him as he was her - and so she's Ryan. Ryan...

_You are my rock, do you know that?_

"Ryan Stone," she says aloud, and starts anew.

 

 

She goes to NASA as Ryan Stone. She goes to space as Ryan Stone - and she begins to work on Explorer as Ryan Stone. She gets to know the crew of STS-157 - Erin Thomas and Drew Evans end up as mere acquaintances but she and Shariff Dasari become pretty good friends, and Matt Kowalski, annoying as he can be, is someone she warms up and takes a liking to. Shariff has a pretty good voice and he sings to her when they're together because he's learned that she doesn't speak to people, whereas Matt sits with her and - much as he loves his own voice and loves yammering on and on - keeps quiet. 

The silence is comforting, not the kind you'd feel the urge to break, just... peaceful. Good. It makes her feel a little more serene, and it helps her take her mind off Andrew and Sarah, most of the time. She's glad for Matt, because much as she's thankful to Shariff for giving them more than silence, she's so, so grateful to Matt for understanding that she needs it. 

So the day before they take off into space, she speaks. It's tough, because she isn't used to saying things after  _ages_ and the words come out throaty and wrongly accented but they make Matt's eyes light up anyway. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he answers, simple and filled with delight and it's the beginning of a lot of conversations between them - sarcastic, humorous, irritated, fun-filled, you name it. 

They become friends - something Ryan can't remember having, not anymore, not after the accident. He makes her smile, real smiles, and it's not everything, but it's something.

 

 

"Listen, they don't bankroll prototypes, even for your pretty blue eyes."

Ryan gives him a look that says  _could you be any more annoying, Matthew Kowalski?_ and replies irritably. "My eyes are brown."

"Right now your eyes are bloodshot _,_ " he comments, and she grins. He got her there - he always does.

 

 

"What do you like about being up here?"

_The fact that I can see Sarah and Andrew amongst the stars and hear their voices when there's nothing else to listen to._

"The silence." 

 

 

_oh my god oh my god shariff oh my god i'm going to die oh my god shariff shariff matt matt I need to disengage what's going on what's going on_

"You have to detach!"

"No, no!" Nothing is coming together, everything is shattering in front of her eyes and Ryan flashes back to a time when she was Margaret Paxton-Tate and  _oh god, Sarah, Andrew, sarahandrewsarahandrew_ but then Matt's voice is there, and he's telling her _Ryan, l_ _isten to my voice, you need to focus. I’m losing visual of you. In a few seconds I won’t be able to track you, you need to detach. I can't see you anymore._

It's stuck, it's stuck, she's spinning, she's -

"I need you to focus. Give me a visual... anything."

Breathing laboured, GPS down, throat dry. Nothing, there's nothing, nothing. 

_Matt?_

 

 

"Lieutenant Kowalski, do you copy?"

Silence.

"Explorer, do you copy?"

Nothing.

Desperation. "Houston, do you copy?"

She clings on to some sense of reality, some sense of what she knows is real. Andrew, Andrew's voice, Sarah's smile, Sarah. "Houston, this is Mission Specialist Ryan Stone. I’m off structure and I’m drifting. Do you copy?" Pause. "Anyone? Anyone... please copy."

The static sings through her her helmet, and Ryan thinks about everything amongst the nothing she's got back on Earth, tries to listen out for something, anything that's familiar. Sarah's laughter, like a summer breeze. The voice Andrew used to mimic when he read bedtime stories to Sarah. 

Her name.

Her name?

"... Stone. Do you copy?"

Her breath hitches. "Kowalski?"

"Repeat. Do you copy?"

"Yes, _yes!_ I copy! I’m here!" _Oh god, Matt, oh god, thank god,_ and suddenly she's back, and there's that slightest hope that it's going to be okay.

 

 

Right. The calm before the storm. Ryan curses in her head after the business with the tether and the momentum and the paralysing fear that  _he's gonna let go again._ "We'll go back to the shuttle, how's that for a plan?"

"Fuck," she yells, forgetting everything else but the primal rage and terror raking at her skin. 

"Copy that," Matt chuckles softly, and the sound eases her rapid pulse just the slightest. 

 

 

"Am I a go to retrieve?"

She wants to hear something. Anything. 

"Roger that." Ryan swears she can hear the slight hiccup in his voice when he says it, when she gets her hands on the photograph.

_Oh, Shariff -_

Ryan wants to grab the photograph and hold it close to her heart and never let go but it drifts, drifts away into the never-ending, boundless territory of space and she wants to chase after it and take it home, bring it back to Earth. Shariff deserves that, at least. But she can't, she can't.

She remembers the singing, the humming, his friendly smile as he tried to make her feel more at ease. 

_I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry._

The shuttle is... the shuttle is devastated. There are corpses in there that float out into space, frozen, never to wake again. Matt says something about being the  _sole survivors of STS-157_ to Houston in the blind and Ryan feels like she's been punched in the gut. Sole survivors. The lost dead.  _Like Andrew. Like Sarah._

She blames herself, and Matt tells her not to, and he touches her lightly on the shoulder. "Hey."

Ryan takes a deep breath. "Yes. Okay, I got it. Yes."

"We have to get ourselves to the space station. There." He points at the bright dot in the distance, far away. "Bit of a hike. But it's our only..." He catches himself, not fast enough. "Our best option. Agreed?"

She stares at the tiny dot, mesmerised. Their only chance of survival lies there.

"Dr Stone. Agreed?"

Ryan turns, studies his face, which is a mask of calm. "Agreed."

 

 

"Where's home?"

_Oh, Matt, why do you ask the hardest questions? Home is in Andrew's arms, home is with Sarah on my lap, home is wherever they are, so why am I so afraid to die?_

"Lake Zurich."  _Sitka._

"Where the hell is that?"

"Illinois."  _Alaska. It's beautiful. I fell off a boat once, there, and he saved me, and he made me learn how to swim._

At least, when he asks her what she does, when he asks her about the radio and what she listens to, she can answer truthfully without any guilt on her conscience. "As long as they don't talk. I just drive."

"What do you miss down there?" Pause. "Is there a Mister Stone?"

_No, no, no, no, no, no..._

"Nobody special? Someone down there, looking up, thinking of you?"

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no._

But it still slips out, and she whispers "I had a daughter".  _I had a daughter. I had a husband. I had something, and now, now, I have nothing. Nothing._

"What was her name?" She can feel his gaze on her through the mirror on his suit. Studying her. Waiting.

"Sarah." She's an engineer, she can think on her feet, she's good at lying. Ryan makes up a story that runs the lines between strange and believable and fabricates Sarah's age, tells him a crappy story about tripping at the playground and hitting her head. She doesn't make up the part about driving when she got the call, though. Lying the whole way through feels like a betrayal.

 

 

She nearly  _fucking loses Matt_ after the damned backpack thing he's using runs out of fumes and the tether snaps and shit hits the fan but she manages to grab him, pull him back, and they land up in the Soyuz ready to get the  _hell_ out of there. Matt shows her where the Russians stow the vodka - she really didn't believe him, but colour her surprised. He grins at her with the high of someone who's confident they're going to get back home, takes a shot, and glances at her. "So, I've been meaning to ask. What kind of name is Ryan for a girl anyway?"

Ryan likes to think he doesn't see the pain that shadows her eyes in that instant. "Dad wanted a boy." It's a pretty good explanation, she thinks, and as she looks out of the Soyuz she sees Andrew's face outlined in the darkness.

"Let's go."

 

 

The fucking thing runs out of fuel. 

_Oh my god, I will never diss Murphy and his fucking law again._

And - why is Matt going unconscious?

_Why the fuck is Matt going unconscious - Matt - Matt?_

"You know something?" He whispers sleepily as his eyes begin to close. "Ryan's a nice name for a girl."

_Oh fuck._

 

 

There is Aningaaq, and there is the depressurisation, and there is hopelessness, and then she dreams, and it's Andrew, and it's Sarah.

For a moment she can't believe her eyes, and then Ryan knows she's dreaming but that doesn't stop her from racing up to them and embracing them. " _Andrew!_ Sarah,  _Sarah!_ "

"Hey," Andrew says quietly, holding their daughter in his arms. Their eyes are both dark and full of sorrow. "You've got to get out of here."

"What?" Ryan blinks, not comprehending. "Andrew - "

"Listen to me." Andrew touches his fingertips to her cheek, and his voice gets a little lower and yet it's mixed with Sarah's light childish tone. "It is  _not your time._ This is not your time. You have so much more to accomplish. You  _must get home._ You have to wake up and go home."

"No, no, no, I'm not leaving you again, no," Ryan screams, her pitch rising higher and higher. "No,  _no_ \- "

His gaze doesn't flicker. "You have to go."

"Andrew,  _Andrew_ \- "

"My love," He replies, and kisses her forehead. "You have to  _let go._ You are Ryan now; you chose that, and you know why. You have to live in the moment. You'll never get anywhere if you keep clinging to the past." He traces a heart on her cheek. "You have to learn to love again. To live again."

"Sarah," Ryan sobs, reaching out to hold her daughter. "Please - "

"Ryan." 

Something in Andrew's voice makes her look up at him, properly. 

"Ryan, you love him, too."

He doesn't even need to say it but Matt's face flashes into her mind and then -

"Wake up," they both intone - and Ryan's eyes snap open.

She steadies herself, repressurizes the cabin, shakes Matt awake by some miracle and tests his consciousness.  _We can do this. We have to._

_Let's go._

 

 

God bless Wall-E and fire extinguishers, Sarah was right, she was cooler, _take that Andrew,_ and  _God fucking bless._

They almost fucking  _tumble_ into Tiangong laughing breathlessly after letting the now-useless extinguishers float into space to join all the other junk. 

One last try. One last try to get back home. Shenzou, here they come. 

 

 

"Ryan?"

"Yes?"

Matt smiles at her. "We can do this."

 

 

_Oh my god yes._

As the shuttle plummets to Earth alongside the hauntingly, devastatingly beautiful cascade of the firelit Tiangong debris with Matt's hand resting on hers, Ryan thinks she sees Andrew's face in the flames, thinks she hears Sarah's laugh in the roaring chaos. 

But she closes her eyes, and all she sees is Matt. 

 

 

Ryan'd envisioned a lot of different endings to their story, and call her a pessimist, but getting back home safe and struggling out of a lake in god-knows-where and coughing up bitter saltwater on a muddy shore was not one of them. But here they are, back home, back on Earth, and the world looks so beautiful, she could cry.

Beside her Matt props himself up with an effort and squints into the sunlight, a small smile on his face. "Hey, Doctor Stone."

She turns to him, and she can't help but smile, as well. "Yes?"

"I was just thinking - when we get back and we can dodge the media circus for a bit, maybe we could go out for coffee or dinner together." He grins playfully at her, like they didn't just fall from the almighty heavens and nearly drown in a bloody lagoon after all they went through up there, but his eyes are soft and warm and the emotion is genuine.

Ryan recognizes that gaze. She's seen it before, in Andrew's eyes when they got married, for real that time. When Sarah was born. That awe and reverence and overwhelming respect and love. 

She thinks of Andrew, who never stopped believing in her and told her to shoot for the stars and envisioned a beautiful future for them and their daughter. She thinks of Sarah, who wanted to be an editor  _and_ a medical engineer  _just like mommy and daddy._ She thinks about how they'd have welcomed her home if the accident had never happened, if this mission had gone the way it should have. She thinks about how, if they had traded places, if she had been the one to die that day, she would have wanted Andrew to be happy - even without her by his side. She thinks about how he might have moved on, married someone else, given Sarah a mother. How she would have  _wanted_ that for him, for them, and maybe she should remember that Andrew wanted that for her too. 

Ryan looks over at Matt, who's still waiting patiently, expectantly, for an answer. He is wounded - they are both bleeding, a bit, and more than a little bruised - and he is  _there._

_You'll remember to live in the moment, won't you? No more living in the past, Margaret. Do that for me. Do that for Sarah._

Andrew's last words to her echo in the recesses of her mind along with the vision of him during the depressurization and Ryan recalls meeting Matt for the first time, then talking about the most inane things when there was nothing else to talk about, then nearly losing him in the depths of merciless space, and she can't recall when she began to fall in love but that's okay, because she never could remember with Andrew either.

She thinks that maybe she could tell this man the truth. That maybe she could tell him that Sarah didn't trip and fall but she died in a car accident with her father, that there was never a Mister Stone but there  _was_ a Mr and Mrs Paxton-Tate and maybe, in a sense, there still is. She could tell him why she called herself _Ryan Stone_ and tell him of a life before all this - and the look in his eyes assures her that Matt wouldn't judge her, wouldn't push her away the way she's done to herself. 

"Sure," she answers, and to lighten to mood she adds: "but only if there are pretzels," then inches closer to a chuckling Matt as they wait for rescue to arrive. Matt puts an arm around her and brings her closer and she can read the question in his eyes - Ryan nods and he kisses her, and it's so, so different from Andrew but maybe, maybe, that's finally starting to feel... it's not _right,_ yet, but she can't say it feels outright  _wrong_. And right now, that's all she needs.  

"Hey, Matt," Ryan whispers when he withdraws, cups his cheek in her hand. "Want to hear a story?"

His eyes twinkle. "Is it a long story?" 

"It's a long story."

Matt presses another kiss to her temple. "Well, good thing we have time." 

 

 

"That  _was_ a long story."

"Yeah."

There is a pause, as they get out of the car and head into their third press con of the week. "I hope Andrew and Sarah would have wanted me to say this to you."

"What?"

"That I want to create an even longer one with you."

She laughs, and it's been so long since she's laughed like that without a twinge of guilt, of heartache. "Okay."

 

 

Three years later their names are in the history books and they have newspaper articles and accolades framed over the fireplace. There's a roaring wood fire and a pack of pretzels and steaming mugs of cocoa on the coffee table in their living room. There's a string of polaroids of their daughter Margaret between the mantel and the shelf of framed photographs - there's one of Andrew and Sarah on the shelf, of course, and there's another one of Matt and Ryan with Aningaaq and his dogs in Greenland - but that's another funny story altogether - and they both agree: 

they do have one hell of a story to tell. 


End file.
